of the sea or Biscayne Bay at least, when he was in Marine Patrol. Or she acted like she did… which probably meant she actually did. One of the things he had always admired about her was that she was one girl who didn’t try to hide her feelings. Flattery was something she really hated. She treated it as the Eighth Deadly Sin. ::::::Oh, Manena! To this day you probably don’t realize what you did to me! You didn’t come to Yeya’s birthday party that day to see me. You weren’t even curious about what I had gone through. You came to throw me under the bus, and you gave me no warning. You had been a little distant for a couple of weeks, but I eagerly explained that away, didn’t I…. Did I ever tell you how I felt when I lay next to you? I didn’t want to just enter your body… I wanted to enter you so completely that my hide would wrap around yours, and they would become one… my rib cage would contain your rib cage… my pelvis would be conjoined with your pelvis… forever… my lungs would breathe your every breath… Manena! You and I were a universe! That other universe out there revolved about us… We were the sun! It’s pretty stupid of me not to be able to get you out of my mind. I’m sure I’m long gone from yours… me and Hialeah… I’m seeing someone else… From the moment you said that, I knew it was some americano. I’m still convinced of that… We all fooled ourselves in Hialeah, didn’t we—everyone but you. Hialeah is Cuba. It’s surrounded by more Cuba… all of Miami is ours, all of Greater Miami is ours. We occupy it. We’re Singapore or Taiwan or Hong Kong… But somewhere in our hearts we all know we’re really nothing but a sort of Cuban free port. All the real power, all the real money, all the real excitement, all the glamour, is the americanos’… and now I realize that you’ve always wanted in on that… with all that, what was to keep you from—::::::
He was jerked alert by the appearance of a new figure in the eye-ripping JenaStrahl magnification of the world two blocks away.
“Here comes somebody else,” Nestor said in a low voice, as if he were talking to himself. His eyes were pressed against the binoculars. “He’s just come from behind the house, Sarge. He’s heading for the guy in the chair.” Oh, Nestor had learned his lesson that day of the man on the mast. Never again! Never again would he go more than one sentence without throwing in a “Sarge” or a “Lieutenant” or whatever was required. He was one of the great “Sarge”-droppers on the entire force now. “It’s a… Christ, I can’t even tell you what color he is, Sarge, he’s such a mess”… never removing his eyes from the JenaStrahls.
“Can you see his hands?” said the Sergeant in a rather urgent tone.
“Sarge, I can see his hands… Guy looks like a real crackhead… he’s hunched over like he’s eighty years old… Hair looks like he combed it with glue and then slept on it… Christ, it’s filthy… itches all the way from here just looking at it… Guy looks like somebody hocked him up against the wall like a lunger, Sarge, and he’s just oozing down it…”
“Never mind all that,” said the Sergeant. “Just keep your eye on his hands.” It was the Sergeant’s conviction that dope dealers didn’t have minds, especially the ones here in Overtown and the other big black slum, Liberty City. They just had hands. They sold dope, stashed dope, cached dope, smoked dope, snorted dope, fried dope on a sheet of Reynolds wrap so they could inhale the fumes… all with their hands, all with their hands.
“Okay,” said Nestor, “he’s talking to the little guy on the chair.”
The Sergeant was leaning so far toward him from the driver’s seat, Nestor could tell he was dying to take over the JenaStrahls himself. But he also knew he wouldn’t do it. During the handover they might miss something with the dirtbags’ hands.
“He’s reaching in his pocket, Sarge. He’s pulling out… a… that’s a five-dollar bill, Sarge.”
“You sure?”
“I can see Abraham Lincoln’s eyebrows, Sarge. I’m not kidding! Guy’s got one hell of a set of eyebrows… Okay, now he’s handing it to the skinny guy… The skinny guy’s got it balled up in his fist… The big